Long Live the Queen
by general zargon
Summary: The town of Gilstreph has a demon problem and they call in Devil May Cry to take care of it. It was supposed to be a simple job, but when are things ever simple when it comes to demons? Rated M, just to be safe.
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

**Long Live the Queen**

_**By **__General Zargon_

It was supposed to have been a simple job: get in, kill the few demons nesting there, get out, blow the place up, and then head back to Devil May Cry to wait for Dante and tell him all about how she'd completed the job all on her own.

But then, things could never be simple when it came to demons, and what the information had said were only a few demons were actually a few _dozen_, and they all looked alike, which explained why – since they were only seen from a distance – people had thought there were only a few demons in the old house.

The Gallows' Hill Mansion was the town of Gilstreph's local haunted house, and it was a miracle that it hadn't been torn down years ago. It was a stereotypical dark and scary-looking house, with creaky shutters and wooden floorboards, and the hinges on the doors were in dire need of oiling. The paint on the outside was peeling, and the wood used to create the majority of the house looked rotten, part of the handrails that bordered the stairs leading up to the porch having rotted through entirely. She had avoided touching or relying on the rails on her way up to the house, having more sense than to rely on rotten wood to support her weight and not trusting that the rails wouldn't give out halfway up the dozen stairs leading to the front porch.

In its' prime, Patty Lowell had no doubt that the mansion would have been an impressive sight, a silent sentinel overlooking the town, but after so many years of neglect it had become an ideal place for demons to nest. Lately the townspeople had been feeling incredibly uneasy around the old place, and what had once drawn teenagers seeking to prove their bravery by staying a night in the 'haunted house' was now avoided like to get close to it was to disappear forever…which hadn't been far from the truth as of late. Lately at least a dozen homeless people and drifters had vanished in the house, and three days ago several teenagers – really just kids who'd had a bit too much to drink – had gone inside the mansion and never come out again. Local law enforcement had searched the place but found nothing, and then a day later a middle-aged woman walking her dog had reported seeing frightening shadows and hearing unearthly screams coming from the building. And so a call had been placed to Devil May Cry, since this was obviously a job for a devil hunter.

The now seventeen year-old Patty had been hanging around the office while waiting for Dante to get back from a job when the call had come in, and she'd answered the phone thinking it was Dante calling to tell her he would be back soon or something like that. What it had been couldn't have been more different than what she'd been expecting. She had picked up the receiver, said 'hello', and the person on the other end had responded by giving her the password. Dante had told her the password in case of emergencies, but she'd never thought she'd hear someone actually say it when calling the office. The combination of fear, desperation, and hope in the other person's voice had floored her, and she'd floundered a bit before she'd asked what the job was.

She had figured that she'd take down the information for the job and then hand it to Dante when he got back, but as she'd listened to the specifics an idea had begun to niggle at the back of her mind. It had sounded easy enough, a simple demolition job that Dante could probably do in his sleep, and after she'd hung up the phone she had sat on the couch in silence, torn about what she should do. She had argued with herself, part of her wanting to wait for Dante, and the other part urging her to take the job herself. She had been tired of Dante treating her like she was still a little girl and what better way to drive home the fact that she wasn't than by taking care of a job all by herself?

So Patty had changed into some clothes that she'd thought would be easy to move in while fighting – tight denim shorts, knee-high leather boots, a long sleeved black shirt, and to top it all off, a large ammo belt like the one Lady wore all the time – and had begun grabbing all the things she'd thought she would need. First, a well-stocked first aid kit went into one of the pockets on the belt, then she put a few vials of Holy Water (just in case) in another of the pockets, and lastly she began packing the remaining pockets with ammunition, since although Lady had been training her and helping her to improve her aim, she didn't want to bank on always being able to take out the demon she was aiming at in one shot. Hence, extra ammo in case things went south.

Before she'd left, she had emptied out her backpack and then refilled it with the explosives that Dante kept around for missions like the one she had decided to take. She had also written a short note to Dante saying that she'd accepted the job that had come in while he'd been out, and that she should be back sometime in the next few days. As an afterthought, she had written down where she'd be going in case Dante decided to freak out or something. All the preparations done, she'd set out to catch the next bus to Gilstreph.

The specifics of the job were simple: They wanted her (or rather, _Dante_) to go inside the mansion, kill the demons nesting there, look for any survivors from the disappearances and if possible get them out, and then blow up the mansion in order to prevent other demons from nesting there. She had thought for sure that she could handle it with no problem.

Now as she ran along a dark, rickety hallway with flickering lights with her guns held at the ready and the hair on the back of her neck standing on end she wasn't so sure about that. She had already killed at least sixteen demons and more were coming, and she couldn't concentrate fully on tracking them down and putting bullets in their heads because she had to thoroughly check every room for survivors. Considering the number of demons there were, she seriously doubted that she would find any. The demons were mostly Hell Prides and Hell Lusts, as Dante had told her they were called, but she didn't want to take any chances that there might be a more powerful demon controlling the lesser ones, so she determined that she would have to take out the foot soldiers quickly.

Patty swore loudly when a Hell Pride materialized in front of her and raised its' scythe and she quickly lifted her own guns (similar to the ones that Lady used) and shot the thing in the head and chest, the loud _bang _of the gunshots likely alerting other demons to her location. The demon obligingly dissolved into piles of sand, but her guns clicked several times, signaling that she was out of ammo. She swore again as she hurriedly dug out two spare clips, now grateful that she had decided to err on the side of caution for her first job. She ejected the spent clips from her guns and slid the full clips home, hearing a satisfying 'click!' that told her they were secure and ready to fire.

She used a gun in each hand like Dante did, something she guessed she picked up from him, and now she was grateful that she did, since it let her shoot in two directions at once, something that came in very handy when two more Hell Prides materialized on either side of her and attacked.

Two more '_bangs_' and the total of demons she'd killed went up to nineteen.

Somehow she didn't find that very reassuring.

**This is actually something that I came up with while working on another fic…that has absolutely nothing to do with this. The two fics are in no way connected, and I can't seem to figure out how this idea came from that one…Hmmm…Anyway, I know I should be working on my main fic, but this idea wouldn't leave me alone! As always, constructive criticism is welcome, so please read and review!**


	2. More Demons Bite the Dust

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

**Long Live the Queen**

Patty was sure she had cleared out at least half the mansion and she swore that it seemed like there was a demon hiding behind every corner waiting to attack her. She panted and tried to catch her breath as she reloaded her guns and watched the demons she had just shot crumble into dust. Hearing the new clips click into place, her eyes darted around as she raised her arms, her fingers tense and ready to pull the triggers at a moments notice.

She moved cautiously down the rotting hallway she had found herself in, stopping to open each door she came to and searching all the rooms she could find for any evidence that one of the people taken might still be alive. So far she hadn't had any luck on that score, but in almost every room she checked there was a demon waiting to ambush her. Those that attacked her soon found themselves on the floor with bullets in their heads, crumbling into dust minutes later.

After she kicked in the door to the last room in that hallway, she had to raise her guns quickly and open fire when she found, not just one or two demons, but _seven_ demons inside the room, which appeared to be a ruined dining room. She backed out into the hallway hurriedly, rapidly firing bullets into the demonic crowd in the room. Three of the demons – they looked like Hell Prides to her – went down and dissolved into sand under the onslaught of bullets. A fourth demon slipped through the door and got to the side of her, swinging its' scythe to try and slice her in half.

Patty jumped into the air, the tips of her boots briefly touching the ceiling as she performed a back flip and swung her arm out to the side in midair, firing a round directly into the demon's face and smirking as it crumbled into sand. She landed on her feet, crouching for a second before she came up firing at the demons that were near the doorway. Her index fingers pulled at the triggers of her weapons quickly, not wanting to let up and give the demons time to organize or get into an attacking position.

Two more demons bit the dust.

The last demon in the room – Patty recognized it as a Hell Lust – crouched and charged forward, no doubt hoping for a quick kill, she thought as she jumped up and pulled her legs in tight to her chest when the demon darted underneath her and paused when it couldn't find its' target. She rolled head over heels in the air as she fell back towards the floor and landed feet-first on the demon's back. Using the demon as a springboard, she pushed off and launched herself into the ruined dining room, turning in mid-leap and firing at the Hell Lust's back. The demon shuddered as the bullets thudded into it, and there was a moment of intense silence before Patty landed on the dining room floor with a loud 'thud!' and the demon toppled forward, turning into sand mid-fall.

She rolled back to her feet and scarcely paused for another breath as she looked around wildly, her dark blue eyes scanning all the possible hiding places for demons in the room, and after a moment of thought she looked up at the ceiling and made sure there wasn't a demon hiding up there too. She breathed a sigh of relief when she discovered the room was now clear of demons, and she took the time to check her guns, being very glad she did when she discovered that she needed to replace the clips _again_.

Sliding the new clips home, she waited until she heard the tell-tale 'click' before she breathed another sigh of relief and looked around again, double checking to make sure that the room was clear before moving on. When she spotted something shining with a faint light in the back of the room and went over to see what it was, warily holstering one of her guns as she did so, she was shocked when she picked it up and it transformed into a lime-colored stone that glowed with a faint light now that it was in her hand.

Patty stood there for a moment, confused about what she was supposed to do with the thing, before she shrugged and managed to store it in one of the pockets of her ammo belt that had previously held spare gun clips. She was uneasy with the fact that she was using so many bullets so fast in the mansion, and she wanted to get this job over with as quickly as possible. She drew the gun she had holstered to pick up the weird stone from the floor and looked around once more, wary that a demon might have snuck into the room while she'd been preoccupied with the weird glowing rock.

She cautiously made her way to the door and quickly checked out in the hallway before moving on, her breath was coming fast and sweat was forming on her skin as the strain of fighting so many demons in so little time began to catch up with her. She was even more careful than before as she walked down the hallway towards the next one, determined to complete the job even though all she wanted right then was time to rest and regain her energy. She tried to tell herself that Dante could pull off this job without breaking a sweat, but she was very aware of the fact that Dante was a lot more powerful than her and had way more experience than she could ever hope to have.

The seventeen year-old steeled herself, determination flashing in her eyes as she slipped into the adjoining hallway, and she told herself that she could finish this job by herself and all she had to do was pace herself. If she conserved her energy she would be able to clear out all the demons, it was just a matter of time, and as Dante had once told her, '_Only me and fools rush in. Since you're not me, and I'm hoping you're not a fool, you shouldn't rush in._' Sure she'd smacked him on the arm when he'd said that to her, but she couldn't deny that it made sense, even though she thought it was ironic that _Dante_ of all people was telling her not to be reckless.

She unconsciously shrugged and felt the rucksack filled with the explosives she needed to blow the mansion sky-high shift into a more comfortable position. She slipped into another hallway, this one lined with rusted suits of armor and half-rotted paintings of mountains and seafront views, and there weren't very many doors in this hallway, thankfully. She eyed the suits of armor warily, remembering Lady telling her that demons sometimes animated suits of armor to serve as guards, and carefully edged her way past them towards the first of the three doors in that hallway.

The first door opened into a broom closet and she barely resisted the urge to gag at the foul smell emanating from the small space. She saw what looked to be bones at the back of the closet, though it was hard to tell since they were so torn up, and she had the sick feeling that she had just found one or two of the missing people. She swallowed and tried to breathe shallowly as she quietly closed the door and turned to lean against it. She gathered her thoughts fairly quickly, because she couldn't afford to space out in the middle of a demon nest, and straightened up from her leaning position. She held her two guns at the ready and made her way to the second door.

The second door swung open to reveal another closet, though the rotting fabrics inside told her that it was likely a linen closet used to store table cloths, towels, and sheets that weren't being used. A cursory inspection revealed nothing else in the closet and Patty moved on to the third and final door.

Patty took a deep breath, tensed in preparation, and then quickly yanked open the last door, lifting up the gun she held in the hand not holding the doorknob and preparing to shoot anything that moved to attack her in the revealed room. Minutes passed and nothing moved in the shadows of the room, so Patty edged cautiously into the dusty room, drawing her other gun as she did so. The room she was in looked like a guest room, though the bed had long since collapsed and rotted and all the furniture was beyond salvaging. It was a fairly decent-sized room, she decided as she reached the center of the space and turned in a slow circle to look around for any demons waiting to ambush her.

She didn't see any demons, but that didn't mean they weren't there, she remembered, and she was careful as she looked around the room, poking around the closet, wardrobe, and other furniture in the room. She could imagine that the ruined guest room had been quite an impressive sight back in its' day, and any people staying in it had probably had a good time there. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, she turned and walked back out the door, poking her head out and making sure that there were no unpleasant surprises waiting for her out in the hallway. Seeing nothing in the hall or on the ceiling, she stepped out into the hallway proper and made her way to the end of the passage, intending to move on to another hallway or another room. Her plans were derailed when red, web-like beams appeared across the exit, and when she whirled around to look behind her, she saw similar beams blocking the way she had entered the hallway.

Patty took a deep breath and told herself not to panic and mutter out loud, tense and holding her guns ready to aim and shoot at anything that tried to take her down, "Okay, okay, everything is fine. Let's see, blue means you have to solve a puzzle, so red means you have to kill something before you can pass…" _But what was she supposed to kill_? Was the question that ran through her mind.

Her question was answered as, with a horrible clanging and screeching, the rusted suits of armor began to move from their places and hold up their weapons.

**So, what did you guys think? I'm trying to stay true to Patty's character, but since she's older in this fic she's bound to be a bit different, right? Also, I noticed no one besides Sphere Dragon (You rock!) reviewed the first chapter, so I hope posting this second chapter will fix that. As always, constructive criticism is welcome! Please review and tell me what you think!**


	3. Hall of Rusted Horror

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

**Long Live the Queen**

Patty let out a short shriek as she ducked under one of the animated suits of armor's sword swipe, and she let loose a string of curses that she remembered Dante using when he'd stubbed his toe once. She brought her guns up and let loose a hail of bullets directly into the armor's breastplate and succeeded in pushing it back into another suit of armor. She had managed to take down three of the nine suits of armor that had come to life when the red beams had covered the exits to the hallway she was in by shooting at the armors' joints and dismantling them.

Apparently once they couldn't move the magic that had been animating the suits of armor left, which was a good thing for her, since if it came down to a battle of endurance she would definitely lose to the demonic suits of armor. Now all she had to do was somehow take apart six possessed suits of armor before she ran out of bullets and she'd be all set. Ignoring the sinking feeling in her stomach at that thought, she threw herself backwards to avoid a swipe from a rusted axe that would have almost certainly sliced her in half if she hadn't dodged.

Spinning into a back flip, she landed on her feet mere inches away from the red beams that blocked the exit and then straightened up and took careful aim at the approaching suits of armor. One good thing about fighting in a hallway was that the suits of armor had to approach one at a time so she was able to take the time to aim and fire. She pulled the triggers and smirked tiredly when the first suit of armor collapsed into pieces, the magic that brought it to life leaving, and she immediately took aim at the next armor.

She continued in that manner and in what seemed like only minutes all the suits of armor were laying on the floor in pieces, and she sighed in relief as she turned around and watched as the red beams blocking the exit disappeared. She was really glad that she had been able to finish the fight without having to pull off anymore acrobatic stunts, but that didn't mean she wasn't even more worn out than she had been at the start of the fight. She reloaded her guns and walked through the exit, emerging into another hallway, only this one was lined with doors and there looked to be another room at the end of the passage.

Patty took a deep breath to try and restrain her temper, even though she was getting beyond sick and tired of all the damned doors!

Luckily for her and the surrounding walls, most of the rooms were completely empty and a great number of them looked like they'd been storerooms once upon a time. Sure there had been a demon in one of the former storerooms, but all it took was one shot to the demon's head to remedy that situation.

When she opened the last door in that hallway, she was surprised to see some old, rotten furniture still in the room. Apparently that room was where they'd kept spare chairs, tables, and the like. She entered the room cautiously, alert for any sounds that might signal the presence of a demon, and began carefully poking around the rotten pieces of furniture even though she was fairly sure she wouldn't find anything to indicate that someone had been there, human or otherwise.

After sneezing twice and developing a slight hatred for old, rotten chairs, she exited the room and turned towards the room at the end of the hallway. Tense and with her guns raised and poised to fire at a moment's notice, she cautiously stepped into the room and had to stop and gape for several minutes. As it turned out, the room that the hallway led into was some sort of main hall, or maybe a ballroom of some kind. It took very little effort to imagine that in the days when it was new, the main hall would have definitely impressed any visiting aristocrats or important businessmen.

The main hall had a tiled floor that was covered in layer upon layer of dust and grime, and it was completely empty save for piles of rotten wood that might have once been small tables used to put vases or other decorations on. She couldn't be sure, but she thought the walls might have been made of some really expensive wood, since they showed only a few signs of rot instead of the massive amounts of the decay that the other wood in the house had fallen victim to. There was a large glass chandelier above the center of the hall, though the chain supporting it was almost completely rusted through and so Patty very carefully hugged the walls as she edged passed it.

On the far side of the hall from the door she had entered through was a wide staircase that looked like it led up to the second floor of the mansion, but she had thought for sure that she'd already cleared out the demons that had been on the top floor…She eyed the staircase warily before shrugging her shoulders, deciding that it couldn't hurt to double check before she moved on to the other parts of the house. She knew that it was probably too much to hope for that she'd killed all the demons in the house, she thought as she began climbing the staircase.

When she put her foot on the sixth step, an ominous groan sounded from beneath her and a sick feeling of dread welled up inside her stomach as, eyes filled with trepidation, she looked down. She was acutely aware of the weight of the bag of explosives on her back as the stairs beneath her gave way and sent her tumbling downwards along with a good portion of the stairs.

**This chapter was short, I know, but I thought it was a good place to end it. Don't worry, you'll find out where Patty ends up in the next chapter! As always, constructive criticism is welcome! Please read and review!**


	4. Dark Basements and Glowing Rocks

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

**Long Live the Queen**

Patty had her guns up and ready to fire the second she landed on her butt in the middle of a dark stone hallway, and it was a good thing she did because she had to rapidly put bullets through the skulls of no less than _six_ Hell Prides.

Her breath came in harsh pants as she tried to calm her racing heart and she watched as the demons crumbled into dust, taking a moment to reload and get her bearings. She took a moment to look above her, only to blink in disbelief at what she saw. She was currently sitting on the bottom step of another staircase that had been hidden under the one in the main hall, only these stairs led down into some sort of dungeon/basement. A small amount of light filtered in from the hole above where she had fallen through, and that light let her see that she had fallen at least eighteen to twenty feet down, and the only reason she wasn't hurting more was because she had landed on her backside.

The heir to the Lowell legacy wanted to slap herself. Of course a house as old the Gallows' Hill mansion would have a basement, she mentally yelled at herself, standing up cautiously and making sure that her trigger fingers were nice and itchy. She turned side to side to try and get an idea of where the old stone hallway led, and she noted the stairs behind her led up to what looked like the hidden door that probably opened up somewhere in the main hall. She turned back around and, for lack of a better idea, began walking down the hallway while wishing she had thought to bring a flashlight along with the extra ammo.

She didn't know how far she walked down the hallway, but she eventually came to a point where the hallway branched off, forking in half and going two separate directions. She looked carefully down each one, squinting and wishing she had better night vision as she did so, before finally giving up on trying to see all the way down the dark corridors and instead randomly picking one.

Patty made her way warily down the hallway that went to the right, her guns primed and ready to shoot, since she wouldn't rule out demons wanting to ambush her under cover of the shadows in the hallway. Since she didn't have a watch, she didn't know how long she walked down the hallway, but she was obviously down there long enough for her eyes to adjust somewhat and allow her to see more than three feet in front of her face. She grit her teeth and fought back the urge to say a curse that would have made Dante blink and wonder where she'd learned it when she came upon a barrier that blocked the way down the hallway.

The barrier wasn't anything magical or demonic; no, the obstruction was a grate of iron bars, something that had commonly been used to seal off rooms for, _hell_, centuries! She searched around the barrier for a switch that might raise or lower the bars and give her access to the rest of the corridor, but she didn't find anything out of the ordinary.

She resisted the urge to stomp her foot in frustration, instead turning around and going back the way she'd come, thinking that maybe there was something to find down the other hallway. Maybe the people who had disappeared had somehow found their way into the basement? She didn't hold out hope that all of them had survived – the remains she had found in the upstairs closet were proof that at least two of them had been killed – but maybe one or two of them could be saved?

Lost in her thoughts and barely sparing a glance, Patty shot the demon attempting to ambush her from the shadows in the head, not breaking her stride as she walked away from its' dissolving remains.

The seventeen year-old made it back to the fork in the hallway without further incident and she didn't pause as she started walking down the other hallway. It didn't take long before she found the first door, a heavy-looking metal one that had long since turned brownish-red with rust and which she sincerely doubted would open without noise – if it opened at all. She hesitated before she holstered one of her guns and grabbed the rusted door handle firmly before tugging as hard as she could. Slowly, almost painfully so, and with an inhumanly loud shriek, the rusted door inched open, brown-red flecks of rust falling off the hinges.

She slipped around the opened door and entered the room guns first, looking around quickly and keeping her eyes and ears open for anything that might indicate a demon was about to attack her or was setting up an ambush in preparation for attacking her.

The room was made of solid stone, which didn't really surprise her, and was covered in layers upon layer of dust and there were elaborate cobwebs in almost all of the corners. Her footsteps left clear prints in the dust on the floor, and she let out a small sneeze when some of the dust that she had stirred up got in her nose. She sniffed, looked around the room thoroughly and trying to see anything, anything at all that would indicate she wasn't the first person in who knew how many years to have stepped into the dusty room.

There were pieces of furniture covered by gray (she suspected they might have once been white) threadbare sheets, and most of those had the look of either chairs or couches, so she pretty much ruled them out as hiding places for demons. She stepped further into the room, and then froze as it occurred to her that she was seeing what was in the room a bit too clearly, and that her eyes couldn't have possible adjusted to the darkness of the room that quickly. Now on her guard, she took a few more steps into the dusty room, sniffing to avoid sneezing because of all the dust floating around, disturbed by her movements.

Patty noticed that one of the sheet-covered pieces of furniture seemed to be brighter than the others, and she cautiously moved closer to it. It looked like it might be a side table, most likely meant as a replacement in case one from an upstairs bedroom got damaged somehow, only there was a strange lump in the center of the covered top. She holstered a gun, gripped the threadbare sheet with her now-free hand, and quickly yanked it off the side table, pointing her gun towards the strange lump as she did so.

The heir to the Lowell legacy blinked in confusion when the source of the glow turned out to be a _rock_, of all things. The glowing rock was sitting in the middle of the table, casting off a faint illumination of the entire room which had allowed her to see so well in what should have been complete darkness, regardless of the fact that she was human. She looked at the rock distrustfully before dropping the sheet she had been holding loosely and reaching with her now-free hand to poke at the glowing rock. Her pendant didn't react, so she figured the rock wasn't a demon in disguise (she mentally snorted at the thought of a demon disguising itself as a rock, especially a _glowing_ rock, which made it ridiculously easy to find) and she gingerly picked it up.

She shrugged and slipped the glowing rock into the pocket that contained the stone that she'd found in the upstairs room, drawing her other gun after she had done that and taking one more cautiously look around the room, noticing that the glowing rock apparently still worked even though it was inside her ammo belt. She had no trouble seeing the objects in the room, and she only had to deal with one demon trying to ambush her just as she was getting ready to go back out into the corridor.

One shot to the head and the demon crumbled into dust, becoming indistinguishable from the layers of the stuff that already covered the floor.

Patty stepped back into the passageway, relieved the glowing rock she'd found enabled her to see even further down the passage than she'd been able to before, and she started walking further along, her guns held at the ready. She wasn't stupid enough to let her guard down just because she could see a bit further than before. All that time training with Lady and listening to Dante talk about the jobs he went on (after getting it through his skull that yes, she was old enough to listen to the 'Adults Only' parts and she wouldn't scream if he described killing the demons in detail) hadn't been for nothing, and she knew for certain that demons didn't care if you were standing in the light or not, they would kill you either way.

Thankfully, the next seven rooms she checked turned out to be storerooms for spare furniture as well and there were no strangely glowing, or even vaguely unsettling, rocks in them. Just a lot of dust that got in her nose and made her sneeze really loudly, making her feel ridiculous and probably letting a bunch of demons know exactly where she was. As it turned out, only ten more demons attacked her and those were Hell Prides that were quickly taken care of with bullets to the head, though she did have to reload after that.

Of course, her luck gave out when she reached the room at the end of the hallway, and she cringed when the rusted hinges of the door shrieked loudly, releasing an avalanche of brownish flakes as the heavy door slowly inched open.

**Well guys, there's chapter 4, and I hope you enjoyed that cliffhanger! Yes, I know I'm evil, but I've been attacked by plot bunnies recently and I can't remember all the ideas I got, which made me mad, and so I decided to take it out on you guys. Sorry! And to those who are reading this and understand what I'm talking about, I thank you for your sympathy. -_-; As always, constructive criticism is welcome! Please review and tell me what you think!**


	5. A Room of Demons and a Puzzle

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

**Long Live the Queen**

Patty bit off the yell that threatened to escape her mouth, instead hissing out a curse as she tried to avoid getting sliced in half by one of the scythes coming at her as she dodged between the twenty or so demons occupying the room she had just entered. Six of those demons crumbled into dust, courtesy of bullets to the head, and she had to quickly do a back-flip to avoid the scythe of a Hell Pride coming at her from the side. She mentally cursed as the weight of her backpack full of explosives prevented her from moving as fast as she'd like to, and her fatigue wasn't helping her situation.

She jumped up and kicked an approaching demon in the face before using it as a springboard to launch her above the heads of the other demons, and she didn't even have time to smirk when her action caused the demon she'd used as a launch pad to be impaled by the scythes of the other demons that had been aimed at her. She used her remaining air time to fire her guns into the group of demons, grinning in satisfaction when four more demons dissolved into dust.

Hitting the ground and tucking her body into a roll, she came up to her feet quickly and fired her gun right into a Hell Pride's face, spinning around before it had finished dissolving and aiming her guns at the remaining demons. Her guns clicked uselessly and she didn't bother restraining her curse as she swiftly reloaded while the demons closed the distance she had managed to put between them.

She had to perform an impromptu cartwheel to avoid a demon's charge, and she started shooting as soon as she got her footing back. Four more demons bit the dust (and turned into it) and she grinned as she turned to keep the remaining four demons in her line of sight. She was thankful for the glowing rock she'd found, since it really helped to see the demons she was dealing with better, and she was more confident in her aim because of that. Two of the demons charged, scythes poised to strike, and she waited until they got close to her, her muscles tense in anticipation, before she jumped over them and performed a single front flip as she put a bullet through the backs of the Hell Prides' heads.

The heir to the Lowell legacy landed on her feet, crouching slightly to lessen the impact, and felt a surge of pride when the remaining two demons approached her more cautiously. Unfortunately for her, the remaining two demons were a bit smarter than their fallen brethren, though not by much, and they began circling around. She was forced to keep turning in a circle to keep her guns trained on the demons, and more than once she lost sight of one of them for several seconds. She ground her teeth in frustration, his fingers tensing on the triggers of her guns, and as if that were some unseen signal both demons charged.

She had to bend backwards at a ninety-degree angle to dodge the scythe of one of them, but that left her open to the second one's attack. She couldn't stop the yell that escaped her when she felt the scythe pierce through the fabric of her shirt and begin to bite into the skin of her upper arm. She launched herself sideways, spinning at least a dozen times before she landed heavily and lifted her guns, gritting her teeth against the pain shooting through her arm as she fired.

The two demons crumbled into dust courtesy of the clips' worth of bullets she shot into their heads and chests.

Patty breathed heavily as she looked around and then up at the ceiling, making sure that there were no more demons in the room, and then she fell back against the wall she had landed near, sliding down the cool, dusty surface until she was sitting down. She hissed as she reached up with her good arm and tore off the damaged sleeve at the shoulder so she could see the full extent of her injury. She grimaced at the sight of the blood, breathing heavily through her nose as she told herself that it probably looked worse than it was, though she only half-believed herself, and rummaged one handed through her ammo belt in search of the first aid kit she had packed. She was now incredibly thankful that she had thought to bring it along just in case something like this happened, and she hissed through her clenched teeth as she used the sleeve she had torn off to wipe the blood away from her wound so she could see what exactly she was dealing with.

The injury was bleeding slowly but steadily, and the wound itself seemed to be shallow, although it ran from the middle of her upper arm down to her elbow. It didn't even look as though the wound would scar, which she was thankful for, but she knew she had to stop the bleeding or else she would attract more demons than she could deal with. She breathed through her nose as - using her good hand - she opened the first aid kit and dug out the bottle of antiseptic along with a roll of gauze. Using the now-bloodstained sleeve, she wiped away the blood from the wound one last time before she opened the bottle of antiseptic and poured a generous amount over the injury.

She grit her teeth and hissed as the medicine burned away the bacteria from the wound, quickly setting the antiseptic down and fumbling slightly as she tried to wrap the gauze around her injury one-handed. She managed, after several tries, to get the bandage wrapped around her arm with no twisted gauze and no wrinkles. She breathed a sigh of relief as she put the lid back on the bottle of antiseptic and slid it and the roll of gauze back into the first aid kit, which she then put back into her ammo belt.

The seventeen year-old took a deep breath and then heaved herself up to her feet, swaying a bit before the brief vertigo passed and she took a good look around the dust-covered room. The walls were solid stone, which didn't really surprise her, and there were cobwebs in practically every corner, again something that didn't surprise her. What did surprise her, however, was what she saw on the wall opposite the door.

It appeared to be a stone relief, carved in a way that it was raised off the wall instead of sunken into it, of three women dressed in artful robes. Each of the women had a hand raised as if holding something, though only the woman on the far right had something in her hand. It was a glowing rock, just like the ones she had found in the ruined dining room and the storeroom in the basement, and there were holes above the other two women's raised hands where it looked like something could be put.

Not an idiot, Patty put two and two together and got four.

She cautiously approached the stone relief, freezing a few feet away from it when she heard a strange sound, and she turned in time to see glowing blue web-like beams block off the door, and she groaned under her breath as she looked warily around in case some demons had snuck in while she had been examining the stone relief. Seeing nothing, she turned back to wall and thoroughly examined the images, withdrawing the two glowing rocks she had found as she did so and looking from the glowing rocks to the holes in the statue. She carefully gripped the glowing lime-green rock from the dining room and then placed it in the far left hole, frowning when it just sat awkwardly and didn't do anything.

Pulling out the glowing rock from the storeroom, she switched the two rocks and waited expectantly to see if anything would happen. She scowled when after a few minutes nothing happened, and her eyebrow twitched angrily as she removed the glowing rock and held both stones in her hands, at loss as to what she was supposed to do now. She stared at the stone relief and tried to see if there was anything that she had missed when she'd first looked at it, and her eyes landed on the glowing stone already in place in the relief. Staring at the glowing stone, she could have smacked herself as the proverbial light bulb went off inside her head and she immediately tested the rock to see if it could be removed.

As it turned out, it could, and she carefully slid it into the hole on the far left, holding her breath until she heard a distinct '_click_' echo as the rock slid into place. She gently put the lime-green rock from the dining room into the now empty hole on the right and another click sounded. She grinned as she slid the last rock in the final hole, hoping that this time the puzzle would be solved and the blue web-like beams would disappear. There was a loud '_clunk_' and the sound of long-unused gears grinding together before they finally began to turn the way they were supposed to.

A waterfall of dust fell from where it was dislodged as the section of wall holding the stone relief moved backwards slightly, and then slid fully aside to reveal a hidden alcove. Inside the alcove was what looked to be a rough altar, except it was practically covered by cobwebs and even more dust. Patty coughed as she struggled to breath without choking on the massive amount of dust in the newly-revealed space, and she waved her hand in front of her nose and mouth as she squinted to see what was in the alcove aside from the altar.

Her eyes were drawn to something emitting a rich, forest green glow from beneath the mountain of cobwebs, and she shuddered in disgust as she reached into the sticky mass to grab hold of the source of the glow and pull it out so she could see what the heck it was. Her eyebrow twitched as she stared at the thing in her hand, and she couldn't help the exclamation that slipped out.

"You have got to be kidding me, all that for another damn rock?"

**LOL! Poor Patty, she's probably going to hate glowing rocks once this mission is over, isn't she? But don't worry; it wasn't all just to get the glowing green rock! Something else happened too! ^_^ And you'll find out what that something was in the next chapter! As always, constructive criticism is welcome! Please review and tell me what you think!**


	6. A Long Walk and a Demonic Surprise

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

**Long Live the Queen**

Despite how annoyed she was, Patty had slipped the glowing forest-green stone into her ammo belt before she turned around to watch as the blue web-like beams disappeared. She drew both her guns as she walked out of the room and looked around cautiously; remembering Dante telling her that sometimes after he'd solved a puzzle he'd get attacked by demons after he left the room the puzzle had been in. Luckily for her, no demons appeared to attack her, and she could only hope that none of them smelled that she was injured before she could complete her search for survivors and get the explosives into place.

She was relieved to see that, after quickly glancing at the bandage, no red had begun to stain the gauze, and that meant her injury wasn't that severe, even though it sure stung like hell. She made it back to where the fork in the hallway was and had to stop and catch her breath, her fatigue becoming harder and harder to ignore, especially since she was really beginning to feel the weight of the backpack full of explosives she was carrying around. She rested her hands on her knees as she bent over slightly, breathing heavily before she straightened and set off down the opposite hallway, deciding to examine the metal grate one more time and see if there was a lever or switch that she had somehow overlooked the last time she had been down the hallway.

After a long walk and however long it took her to reach where the metal grate had once barred her path, she received a pleasant surprise.

The metal grate was gone. She knew she was at the place where it had been because she could dimly make out the holes in the stone floor where the bottom of the grate had rested for who knows how long. As she quickly stepped over the holes in the floor, she wondered if, when she'd solved the puzzle that opened the door to the hidden alcove, she'd also triggered the mechanism that raised the metal grate and unsealed the rest of the other hallway.

She decided that that was a pretty good explanation and that she was going to go with it until proven wrong.

The seventeen year-old was beginning to think that the corridor led nowhere when she found the first door. It wasn't as rusted as the doors in the other hallway, which could either be a good or a bad sign, though she wasn't sure which she was going to go with when she saw the pile of rust flakes on the ground near the hinges. That could mean that another human had opened the door in the not so distant past, or it could mean that there was demon in the mansion that actually used doors.

Patty took a deep breath, reluctantly holstered one of her guns, and grabbed the door handle with her free hand. Like all the other doors in the basement so far, this door opened with an awful shriek, though she didn't have to pull as hard to open it as she had the others. She still couldn't decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but when she caught a whiff of the smell coming from inside the room, she quickly decided that it was indeed a _very _bad thing. She gagged at the terrible smell of rotting meat, and she reluctantly looked inside the room, only to have to quickly look away and resist the urge to vomit.

Well, she'd found four of the missing people, though she couldn't really tell if there might have been pieces of a fifth person mixed in with the four decomposing bodies. She swallowed repeatedly; doing her best to ignore the smell and the sight of the bodies as she quickly glanced over the rest of the room, confirmed that nothing else was in there aside from the corpses, and quickly shut the door. She turned and leaned against the closed door for a moment, taking a moment to compose herself before she straightened up, drew her gun again, and set off down the hallway once more.

The next few rooms were much the same: there were piles of rust shavings below the hinges, and when she opened the doors there were the remains of at least one person rotting on the floor. Which made the total of people killed six or seven (she still wasn't sure about the number of corpses in the first room) and left at least eight people unaccounted for. She wasn't feeling very hopeful about finding anyone alive, but she knew she would have checked even if it hadn't been a condition of the job. Her thoughts drifting back from wondering about the people who had gone missing, she barely even blinked as she lifted one of her guns and shot the demon that materialized beside her in the head.

She continued walking down the corridor as the demon crumbled into dust behind her. She had stopped keeping track of how many demons she had killed when she'd landed in the basement and been ambushed, but she was pretty sure the number was somewhere in the twenties or thirties by now. She hoped she would be able to finish the job before she ran out of ammo, which she realized was a distinct possibility, what with the way things were going. At that thought, she checked her clips and cursed under her breath as she reloaded and kept walking down the hallway, which was oddly devoid of doors at the moment.

Patty paused for a moment, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end, and she quickly threw herself into a back flip to avoid being sliced into pieces by the two demons that appeared on either side of her swinging their scythes. She landed in a crouch and was already bringing her guns up as the two demons turned towards her, only to be greeted with bullets in their heads courtesy of the aforementioned guns. She stood back up as the demons collapsed into piles of dust and rotated her shoulders to loosen them as she began walking down the stone corridor once again, now more cautious than ever as she made her way towards the next door that she came across.

However, before she could holster her gun and reach for the door handle, she had to hurriedly leap back and cartwheel to avoid a charging Hell Lust. The demon roared and crouched, obviously gearing up for a Hell Lust's signature attack, but before it could begin its' charge, Patty brought her guns up and opened fire on the demon, the side of her lips turning up in a smile as seven of the eight bullets she fired thudded into the demon's chest and head. She growled under her breath when the demon managed to turn around and clumsily swing its' scythe at her, and she felt the breeze left in the wake of the swing as the blade sliced through the air less that an inch from her face.

To her relief, the demon crumbled into a pile of dust before it could launch another attack, and she breathed a quiet sigh under her breath as she straightened up and stepped gingerly through the new layer of dust on the floor as she walked towards the door the demon had tried to keep her from getting to.

The seventeen year-old hesitated before she reached for the door handle, since it occurred to her that whatever a demon would not want her to find could either be something really, really bad, or it could be a room full of prisoners aka the leftovers. She took a deep breath and steeled herself, her eyes flashing in determination, and she reluctantly holstered one of her guns so that she could grab hold of the handle firmly and open the door.

**Wow, it is really, REALLY hot where I am, and with the rise in heat there came a low in my inspiration to work on this story. Instead, I'm now driven to work on several of my other stories, so updates on this story might come a little slower than usual while I work up the will power to force myself to work on this. Sorry guys! I thank you for sticking with me, and I promise to try and force myself to write the next chapters of this story as often as I can! As always, constructive criticism is welcome! Please review and tell me what you think!**


	7. Bones, Blood, and Demons

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

_**Warning! This chapter contains subjects that might mentally scar and/or make you guys want to hunt me down with pitchforks and torches, so if that makes you uncomfortable, just skip the majority of this chapter. You have been warned. Chapter title is proof in advertising, simply because of the squick factor, which I will try and make as gross as possible.**_

**Long Live the Queen**

It was smell that hit Patty first; it was the now-familiar smell of rotting meat, but with an added sting of sweat, blood, fear, and – strangely enough – vomit. She frowned at that combination and tried not to hope as she stepped into the room and looked around, sighing when she saw the rotted, partially eaten body in the corner, but then her head snapped up when she heard a quiet sob come from the corner of the room opposite the body. She did her best not to feel too hopeful, and she tried not to breathe in the smell too deeply as she turned towards where the sound had come from.

She was right not to feel too hopeful, judging by the condition the girl she'd found was in.

While Patty cautiously made her way towards the girl, she looked her up and down to determine what condition she was in, and what she saw wasn't good.

The lone survivor was a teenage girl with dirty, matted brown hair and terrified wide green eyes, most likely one of the teenagers who had disappeared right before the town had called Devil May Cry, but she looked like she had been down there for upwards of a year instead of barely a week. The girl's clothes – a shredded shirt that looked like it might have belonged to a man at one point and a pair of white ankle socks – were filthy and covered in dried blood, but what made Patty have to bite back the urge to curse was the girl's stomach. It was swollen and distended like someone had shoved a basketball up into her stomach.

The heir to the Lowell legacy moved as slowly and nonthreatening as she could while carrying two guns while she slowly knelt down a few feet away from the traumatized girl and spoke gently, "Hi, my name is Patty, and I'm here to rescue you." She could have slapped herself, saying that wasn't likely to make the other teenager trust her any more than saying she was an angel would. The other girl just wasn't liable to believe it, not after what she had been through.

The girl's head shot up and she locked terrified and horror-stricken eyes on Patty before she began screaming and shrieking, flailing around in such a way that the shocked demon hunter was almost convinced that she was having a seizure.

Patty dove forward and tried to restrain the hysterical girl, shouting to be heard over the survivor's screams as she tried to calm the other girl down, "_Stop_! It's alright! It is going to be okay! I'm here to help you, so stop fucking screaming already!" Okay, maybe she shouldn't have said that last part, but her ears were starting to hurt from all the screaming the traumatized girl was doing in her ear and all the racket had likely attracted all the demons remaining in the basement, if not the entire building. However, her unexpected cursing did serve to stun the flailing girl into silence, and she sighed under her breath in relief as she sat back on her heels.

The filthy girl sniffled, tears and snot running messily down what might have once been a pretty face under all the grime, and stammered, "N-no! You're one of them! You're here to hurt me again! To torture me! Get away, leave me alone!" The last part was said on the end of another scream, and Patty winced as her eardrums protested the treatment they were being given.

Patty shushed the girl and made her voice as soothing as possible as she told the victim – because that was what the poor girl was, a victim, "No, no, I'm not a demon. In fact, I'm here because the town hired me to come in here, kill all the demons, rescue any survivors that I find, and then blow this place sky-high." She bit her lip when she mentioned the town hiring her, but given the condition the girl was in, a little white lie wouldn't hurt.

Another sniffle and the girl stuttered out, "R-really?" there was a large amount of doubt in her voice, but given what the girl had been through Patty couldn't really blame her.

Patty nodded encouragingly but before she could say anything else, she heard the unmistakable sound of a demon forming out of the dust on the floor, and seconds later the girl in front of her began screaming bloody murder.

After that it pretty much went to Hell in a hand-basket.

The demon, she thought it looked like a Hell Pride, howled in an odd harmony with the shrieking coming from the girl behind her and raised its' scythe, but Patty was just a little bit faster in raising her guns and pulling the triggers. The rounds thudded into the demon's body and the thing was forced back, Patty taking several steps forward to keep the demon at bay as she tried to get a shot at the demon's head. The demon hunter tuned out the sound of the girl shrieking behind her and just focused on keeping the poor girl safe from the demon.

She had to jump back to dodge the scythe swing when the Hell Pride spun around to attack, and though the demon was clearly weakened it wasn't down for the count just yet. She jumped straight up to dodge the scythe's reversed swing and she landed briefly on the passing blade before using it as a spring board to jump over the demon's head, pointing a gun straight down and firing into the top of the demon's skull as she flipped over the Hell Pride. She landed in a crouch on the ground and then stood up as the demon crumbled into dust behind her, and she swiftly replaced the empty clips in her guns with full ones, just in case another demon decided to take a shot at her.

As it turned out, another demon _did_ want to have a go at her, only this time it was a Hell Lust and it didn't give her a warning that it was attacking like the last one. She just barely managed to dodge the demon's charge and unfortunately the shot she fired hit the demon in the leg instead of the torso she'd been aiming for.

The demon roared, clearly ticked that it had been injured, and it charged again, this time swinging its' scythe and forcing her to go on the defensive. She jumped backward and fired several more shots, this time hitting her target and the demon stumbled back as the bullets pounded into the Hell Lust's torso. She smirked in satisfaction as she got her feet back on the ground and she blew a loose strand of hair out of her eyes, firing a single round into the demon's head before it could recover. It obligingly collapsed into a pile of dust, and Patty stood in the middle of the cell for several more minutes in case more demons appeared.

Thankfully those two seemed to be the only ones willing to try their luck, or so she thought.

She was forced to jump backwards again to avoid the scythe that came out of nowhere, and instead of getting sliced in two she merely got a torn shirt. She grimaced in disgust when her foot landed on one of the exposed bones of the corpse in the cell, crushing it under her heel, and her blue eyes flashed angrily as she hissed out, "Oh, you are _so_ going down, you son of a bitch!" She raised her guns at the same time the demon bellowed in challenge. Time seemed to pause, the shrieking from the girl in the corner echoing strangely, before the demon and the demon hunter moved, almost at the same time.

Patty cartwheeled sharply to the right, firing several bullets into the demon's chest and stomach as she dodged its' initial charge. She landed upright and was almost immediately moving again, running and sometimes jumping to avoid the demon's attacks. Thankfully, this one seemed to favor lunging, and so she had plenty of warning for when it was about to attack. Unfortunately, the thing was fast enough that she had to settle for taking potshots at it in between avoiding its' scythe and jumping out of the way of its' charges. The game of cat-and-mouse continued for almost ten minutes, a lot longer than Patty was comfortable with, but luckily it seemed the shots she had been taking were beginning to have an effect. The demon was slowing down, and while it was trying to recover from another failed swing, she made her move.

The seventeen year-old got alongside the demon and fired a round point blank into its' head. It silently crumbled into dust as she stepped away and looked around, tensing up in case another demon appeared. Her eyes darted around, restlessly scanning the shadows of the cell for any movement, and when she didn't see any she slowly made her way back towards the traumatized girl in the corner. Her guns were held at the ready, just in case, but she was forced to holster them when she made it to the corner that the surviving teenager had crammed herself into.

Patty knelt down in front of the girl again and asked gently, trying to calm the shaking girl down a little, if that was even possible, "What's your name, sweetie?" She tried to give off an aura of confidence with just a dash of '_it's all going to be okay, trust me,_' but she privately thought that Dante was a lot better at that sort of thing.

The girl sniffled, shaking so much it looked like she would come apart at the slightest touch, and replied, her voice barely audible it was so quiet, "M-m-iranda…" Miranda sniffled again, tears carving visible trails through the dirt and grime on her face.

Patty nodded encouragingly and was just opening her mouth to speak and hopefully convince the other girl to get up and follow her out of the house when Miranda suddenly screamed again, a high, piercing sound of pain that seemed even louder in the stone cell. The demon-hunter immediately tensed up and looked around quickly, searching quickly for whatever had made the poor girl scream again, her hands flying to grab hold of her guns, but after a quick, thorough look around, she didn't see anything remotely frightening except for the grisly, half-eaten corpse.

While the cadaver was scary in its' own right, Patty quickly disregarded that as the cause of Miranda's sudden scream. She turned back to look at the other girl, about to ask why the poor girl had cried out, only to shut her mouth with a soft 'click'. Well, she had her answer, Patty distantly thought, just as Miranda let loose another shriek of pain, causing the heir to the Lowell legacy to cringe.

The skin over Miranda's belly stretched and flexed grotesquely, like something was moving inside of her, and that movement was visible even through the filthy t-shirt the girl was still wearing. The girl in question sobbed, tears falling in renewed rivers from her eyes, and clear snot dribbled from her nose and down across her lips, which Miranda appeared to be struggling to keep closed.

Patty admired the courage it took Miranda to do that, even as she began panicking in the back of her mind. Outwardly however, she appeared composed as she knelt down next to Miranda again and gently touched the other girl's painfully thin shoulder, saying as she did so, "Hey, it's all going to be okay, just try and keep calm. I have an idea of what's going on, so you need to do exactly as I say, alright?" She swallowed, resisting the urge to throw up as Miranda nodded with a look of hope in her eyes.

Feeling ill as the dots connected themselves in her head, Patty moved so that she was kneeling between Miranda's outstretched legs, slowly and hesitantly lifting the edge of the girl's threadbare shirt, basically making things up as she went along. She only hoped that all those hospital shows had had some idea of what they were talking about, because they were the only reference point she had on how to help deliver a baby, let alone a _demonic_ baby.

The next half hour passed in a blur of blood, sweat, tears, and exercises in self-control on Patty's part as she repeatedly had to swallow back the bile that tried to rise in her throat and escape her mouth. After Miranda was fully dilated (and Patty resisted the urge to puke once again) she began gently talking to the other girl, repeating what the doctors on the aforementioned TV shows always said when a pregnant woman started to give birth, "Okay, now when I say 'push', you push, alright? I think that the baby is ready to come out now…" She cringed at the uncertainty in her own voice, but Miranda was in too much pain to notice, which was a mixed blessing.

Patty knew that giving birth was supposed to hurt, but after another hour passed and Miranda stopped trying to hold back her tortured screams, she knew that there was no way she wanted to do it herself anytime soon.

A gush of blood and other fluids that she did _not_ want to think about poured over her outstretched hands (she had taken her gloves off when the labor had started, thinking that skin on skin contact would help keep the other girl calm), and the crown of the baby's head began to emerge.

She was just grateful that the baby wasn't backwards or sideways or something even worse than that. She continued talking soothingly to Miranda, making up half the things she said as she went along, and she exerted sheer force of will to ignore her own discomfort and concentrate only on making sure that the poor teenager in front of her survived the labor and the birth.

The baby's head popped out, followed by the rest of its' body in a rush of fluid, followed by something that Patty was reasonably sure was the afterbirth…She quickly caught the child before it could hit the floor, cradling it uncertainly as she looked back at Miranda, only to see the other girl slump backwards like a puppet whose strings had just been cut. The demon hunter quickly shifted until she was crouching at the girl's side and using one hand to check the poor girl's pulse and vital signs. To her relief, Miranda was alive, though her pulse was rather weak, and she sighed quietly, turning back to the baby that she was still holding and that now was as good a time as any to check something.

All things considered and given the dubious lineage of its father, the baby looked shockingly normal, although it already had a tuft of thick black hair on its' head, and its' eyes were already clear and open, revealing their shocking bright purple coloration…and she would have to start calling the child a 'he', she discovered as she quickly peeked between the baby's legs, blushing slightly as she did so.

Miranda groaned, quickly attracting the heir to the Lowell legacy's attention, and Patty hurried to reassure the stirring girl, "Hey, welcome back, Miranda. You're going to be okay, so just take it easy, alright?" She adjusted the baby's position slightly, holding him a bit closer to her stomach as she check Miranda's pulse again, happy to find that it was stronger than it had been before.

The other girl blinked dazedly, murmuring softly as she asked, "Wha-what happened?"

Patty smiled as reassuringly as she could, even though she was beginning to notice the smell once again and the urge to throw up was returning, "Congratulations, it's a boy. Would you like to see him?"

Evidently that was the wrong thing to say, and it was like a switch had been flipped as Miranda began screaming and crying again as she scrambled away from Patty, who had been beginning to hold out the baby to the other girl.

Patty blinked and was left gaping in shock as Miranda screamed at her to "_get that monster away from her!_"

In a feat of surprising strength, Miranda managed to push herself to her feet and begin to stumble towards the still open door, trying to get away from her baby.

Patty quickly snapped out of it and stood up, following after the other teenager and calling out, "Wait! It's not safe out there! At least let me go with you to the stairs, so I'll be able to be sure that you made it out!"

Miranda made it to the door and shouted, her voice more than a little hysterical, "I don't care! I don't to see that-that _thing_ anywhere near me!" She lurched out the door and Patty heard the sound of her running back towards where the stairs were.

A few minutes passed as Patty registered what had happened, and she slowly looked down at the baby, who was looking up at her with a rather disturbing look in his eyes, like he understood what had just happened and knew that his mother had abandoned him.

The seventeen year-old swallowed nervously as she tried to decide what to do, since she couldn't very well leave the kid there. First thing's first, she told herself, get something to wrap the kid in so he doesn't get cold. For want of anything better, she tore off the part of her shirt below the cut that the demon's scythe had made in it, winding up with both an impromptu baby blanket and a belly shirt.

She wrapped the boy in the improvised blanket, making sure that his face wasn't covered up and that his feet were, she muttered to him, "Well, looks like you're coming with me, kiddo…" She held him with one arm, tucking him close to her chest as she walked out into the hallway, tugging on her gloves as she did so. Once her gloves covered her hands, she used her free hand to draw and hold one of her guns while the other supported the baby.

Patty decided that she would have to think up a name for the kid later, after the whole mess was sorted out.

With a sigh, she turned and started walking down the hallway, eyes open for any signs of demons or other survivors. Whoever the big bad in charge of the other demons was, he/she/it had seriously ticked her off.

**Author's Note: For those of you who might be wondering (you know who you are), the reason I call Patty the heir to the Lowell legacy is because she **_**is**_**, just not the Lowell's who the other Patty from the first episode is related to. The reason I explained is that someone reviewed my other DMC fic 'Movie Night' and asked that question, but they didn't sign the review so I couldn't answer them. Anyway, Patty will get back to kicking demon butt in the next chapter, so I hope you'll be patient with me!**

**I'm sorry for the long wait between chapters, but I've been swamped with plot bunnies and the muse for this story is all but dried up, only to be revived by watching the DMC anime again. Never fear, I shall finish this story, it just might take awhile. Thank you for being patient, and please R&R to tell me what you think!**


	8. Locked In

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

**Long Live the Queen**

Patty barely restrained the urge to curse as she half-turned and shot an attacking Hell Pride in the face, simultaneously dodging another's scythe, grinding her teeth as she twisted around and shot the other demon in the head and torso, causing both to disintegrate into dust. She was breathing heavily, but she was rather pleased with herself for being able to kill demons so well with the use of only one of her guns.

She readjusted her hold on the baby, double-checking to make sure that the kid was okay, and she saw him looking up at her with those oddly clear and focused eyes. She guessed that that meant he was okay, so she took a moment to look around and make sure that no other demons were going to materialize and attack her.

The coast was clear for the moment, and she breathed a sigh of relief as she took the time to check her gun to see how many bullets she had left…and the moment she did, she was glad because it meant that she wouldn't be going into the next fight with one empty gun. Balancing the baby on her hip, she exchanged the empty clip for a full one, and she bit her lip when she noticed how low on ammo she was actually getting. Either she finished the job _fast _or she would have to leave the house and get more bullets, and that would give the demons time to regroup and call in reinforcements.

Her blue eyes narrowed, because there was no way in Hell that she was giving whoever was in charge of the horde of minor demons infesting the mansion time to call for even more of the things.

Patty shrugged her shoulders, the backpack full of explosives shifting into a more comfortable position, and she noted that she was getting more and more conscious of how heavy it was. If the job took much longer, the backpack was going to slow her down even more, and that meant there would be a greater chance of a demon getting a lucky shot in. Not to mention she also had to juggle the baby she was carrying around and keep him out of harm's way while she was killing the Hell Prides and Hell Lusts that she ran into.

The seventeen year-old frowned, as she straightened up and shifted the baby so that she was holding him in the crook of her arm, stopping to take a look around the room that she was currently in just so she could be sure that she hadn't missed anything, like a demon lurking in the shadows waiting for her to let her guard down.

The room was made of solid stone and look pretty much like all the other rooms in the basement that she'd been in so far, with the exception of a lack of human bones and other remains, for which she was thankful. Back when the mansion above had still be occupied, it looked like this particular room had been used as a jail cell, judging by the old, rusted chains dangling from several places on the wall.

She shuddered, deciding that she had spent enough time in that room and that it was time for her to get moving and complete the job of exterminating all the demons she found and blowing the place up. She doubted that there had been any other survivors aside from Miranda, and she had no idea if the other girl had made it out alright or not…but that was probably the least of her problems, she realized.

Patty held her reloaded gun firmly in her hand, looking around cautiously as she exited the room and reemerged in the hallway, quickly raising her weapon and shooting the demon that materialized beside her in the head right after it finished forming. As it dissolved, she looked around carefully, her eyes narrowed as she tried to see beyond the faint light provided by the glowing rock she had stashed in one of her ammo pouches. She couldn't afford to be caught off guard, especially since it wasn't only her life in danger anymore.

In the time since Miranda had run off and she had been left with the baby, she had explored seven other rooms, all of them empty of anything save groups of demons. Now, she was wondering just how far this tunnel _went_ and if it might have been some kind of escape tunnel back in the day. She didn't think she was quite out from under the mansion just yet, but she thought that she might have been getting close.

Just as soon as that thought passed through her mind, she nearly ran into the end of the corridor, a solid wall cutting her off from advancing any further. A frown crossed her face and stayed there as she looked around, wondering if there was some sort of secret door in any of the rooms she had searched, or a lever that would reveal a secret passageway, because surely the barrier in front of her wasn't the end!

The seventeen year-old blinked when she saw something that had definitely been absent from the first hallway she'd gone down, and from all the rooms she had searched since: on either side of her, there were two empty candle holders, but only one of them was covered in cobwebs. A thoughtful look crossed her face, and she shifted so that she was holding her gun in the same hand that was holding on to the baby as she reached towards the candle holder without cobwebs.

A hard pull, and the holder obediently tilted downwards, and she could hear long-disused gears grinding and moaning as they began to move…and yet, they didn't sound as nearly as bad as the gears that had moved the inlaid statues of the three women aside to reveal that damned shrine had sounded, which told Patty that these had definitely been used sometime in the last week or so.

The seemingly dead end wall slowly rose up before her, and she distantly switched her gun back to her free hand as she watched the aged mechanism work. With the wall gone, she could see the staircase that had been hidden behind it, though the stairs only seemed to go down about six feet before the staircase curved. Taking a deep breath, she held her weapon at the ready as she started down the stairs, her muscles tensed in anticipation of an ambush.

She wasn't disappointed.

A Hell Pride appeared from the dust on the stairs as soon as she reached the place where the staircase curved and was quickly turned back into dust courtesy of a bullet to the head. That had seemed to be the signal the rest of the demons were waiting for, however, and the next few moments passed in a blur of gunshots and demons exploding into piles of dust and sand.

Breathing heavily, the heir to Lowell legacy glanced around and, seeing no other demons, decided it would be best to get off the stairs as quickly as possible so that she would have more room to maneuver. Quickly reloading her gun, she started down the stairs once again, killing the demon that appeared from around the corner without batting an eye.

She didn't know how long it took to reach the bottom of the stairs, but she _did_ know that the stairs seemed to be leading back the way she had come, only on a different level, obviously. She wondered seriously how deeply beneath the mansion she actually was and how long it would take her to get back up to it and a safe distance away before the explosives she was planning on setting blew up. The last thing she wanted was for her and the kid to get caught in the blast and get barbequed.

Patty shuddered at the thought and pushed it out of her mind just before she took a step forward into the room at the bottom of the stairs, and her blood went cold as she looked around.

The room was made of dark gray stone, the same as the corridor above had been, and was longer than it was wide, but it was still rather large. Directly across from the stairs was another entrance, though she couldn't see anything through because she was so far away and the light from the glowing rock she had didn't extend that far. However, what made her suck in her breath was the statue set against the wall mid-way across the room. It looked like a wheel set on top of a pedestal, and on the tip of each 'wheel spoke' was a glowing orange flame.

_Dante had told her about these kinds of statues._

She gasped and lunged forward, just as a shimmering barrier appeared in front of the stairs and at the doorway on the other side of the room. The teenager immediately burst into motion, running to the corner of the room closest to her, hoping that what she was thinking was right. She set the baby down as quickly and gently as she could, shrugging off her backpack of explosives and setting it somewhat in front of him to provide a bit of concealment. She would need all the speed she could get for what was about to happen, if what Dante had told her was true.

The demon hunter had just drawn her second gun and taken three steps away from the corner when the orange flames around the edge of the wheel statue went out…

**Author's Note: I know, I know, I'm evil for keeping you all waiting for so long and then ending on a cliffhanger. LOL! And I'm sorry the chapter was so short! *Dodges thrown tomatoes* I hope I kept Patty in character, since it's been a while since I wrote her and I'm not sure if I deviated from previous chapters or not…Be sure to let me know, okay? Please read and review! As always, constructive criticism is welcome!**


	9. Statues, Demons, and Lanterns oh my

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

**Long Live the Queen**

What looked like a dust storm was brewing in the middle of the room, and out of the clouds of ash and sand formed the demons that she would have to fight in order to leave the room, all of them surrounded by a kind of grayish aura.

Patty vaguely remembered that the aura meant that the demons – Hell Prides and Hell Lusts - were a lot stronger than they were normally, and in order to get rid of their power-up, she would have to relight the flames on the statue in the room. Her grip on her guns tightened as she started moving, running towards the crowd of demons and firing her weapons, trying to weaken them while they were still getting their bearings.

The demons were thrown into disarray by her sudden attack, which gave her a slight advantage that she wasn't about to waste.

She fired three rounds into a Hell Pride's skull and resisted the urge to swear when that only staggered the demon instead of causing it to disintegrate like it usually would have. Sensing something coming towards her from behind, she crouched and then jumped into a back flip, going straight over the charging Hell Lust and using the opportunity to put two bullets through the top of the demon's skull.

Unfortunately, that was about as effective as her attack on the first Hell Pride had been, and the moment she landed she immediately began firing more rounds into the group of demons surrounding her now, trying to get them to back off and give her some breathing room. It worked, after a fashion, and she had just enough time to reload her guns and duck to avoid a scythe swing that would have taken her head off if she hadn't moved.

Patty barrel-rolled to avoid getting stepped on as she fired her guns at the demons' legs, not knowing if the ones she hit belonged to the same demon or if she was hitting more than one and not caring as long as it slowed a few of them down and bought her some time to figure out what the heck she was supposed to do. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but she wouldn't be able to keep dodging them and counterattacking for long. All the fighting she had done prior to entering that particular trap had begun to catch up to her and she needed to relight the fires before the demons figured that out.

She could only pray that the statue didn't need to be hit with a certain weapon before the flames relit, because the only weapons she had were her guns and a limited supply of bullets. She broke through the crowd of demons, coming up on the opposite side of the room, and she couldn't spare the breath to curse as the demons turned en masse and began moving towards her. Shooting several of them in the head slowed them down, and jumping up to avoid a Hell Lust's charge at her legs saved her from a gruesome death, but those were all temporary fixes, she knew.

The seventeen year-old cart-wheeled out of the way of another demon's charge, managing to fire several rounds into its' side to hopefully weaken it as she did so, and she landed on her feet shooting. Thankfully the group of demons were moving as a unit, which meant that their movements were easier to predict, and _that_ meant that she could stay one step ahead of them, hopefully long enough for her to get the statue. She remembered Dante's stories about traps like these, and she knew she would have to keep hitting the thing continuously or else the flames would go out and she would have to start all over again.

Of course in order to do that, she would need to get some room between her and the horde of demons currently attacking her…

A look of determination crossed her face and stayed there, and her grip on her weapons tightened as she burst into motion, emptying the last of the bullets in her current clips into the demon closest to her and quickly reloading. She was going to need fresh ammo in order to pull this off, that much she knew that without having to think about it, along with a hell of a lot of luck. Her eyes darted to the dark statue and she quickly shot several bullets from one gun experimentally into the center of the stone wheel while holding back the crowd of demons with the other. It felt like a weight had been lifted off of her shoulder when one of the fires on the edge of the wheel lit up, casting a small amount of light through the room and enabling her to see better.

Patty was a lot faster than the demons were moving, and she immediately used that to her advantage to break away from the demonic pack and charge towards the statue, firing round after round of bullets into it as she did so. Her heart was pounding frantically against her ribs, her pulse hammering so hard she could barely hear above the rush of blood in her ears, as one by one the flames on the edge of the wheel ignited.

Everything seemed to be going in slow motion as she got closer to the statue, distantly aware of the howls of the group of demons right behind her. Half of the fires were now lit, and even as she watched another flame blaze to life over the light of her guns' muzzle flashes. She barrel-rolled to the side to dodge the scythe swing of one of the Hell Lusts that that gotten close and kept firing at the statue. The last thing she wanted was to have to start trying to light the fires all over again just because she stopped to put a few bullets in a demon's head.

Hearing her guns click and signal that she was out of ammo, she swiftly spun into a move not unlike a pirouette as she changed clips to reload. It was tricky, dodging demons and reloading her guns, but she managed, and she quickly resumed firing at the statue as she started running again, this time moving in a diagonal motion to lead the horde of demons away from her backpack and – most importantly – the baby.

Zigzagging to avoid the various scythe swipes of the pursuing demons, she nearly cheered when the last flame on the stone wheel lit, and she felt the rush of releasing power at her back. When she spun around and started shooting, this time aiming at the demons, she saw that their auras were gone and they had paused in confusion. The teenage demon hunter took full advantage of their momentary inaction, destroying four with headshots before they got their acts together.

The seventeen year-old didn't know how long it took for her to destroy the last of the demons, but she had to reload once more before the last one crumbled into dust.

Breathing heavily, Patty looked around cautiously, her blue eyes narrowed in concentration as she waited to see if more demons would appear or if she only had to fight the one group. She hoped it was the latter…Abruptly the flames along the edge of the stone wheel went out, and her entire body tensed as her vision struggled to adapt to the lesser amount of light. She was really, really thankful for that glowing rock she had picked up now, as it enabled her to see more than just her hand in front of her face.

She was standing just several feet in front of now-dark statue, facing the open room, when she heard a loud '_clunk_' sound from somewhere in the direction of the ceiling, and she quickly looked up. A soft, orange-gold glow suffused the room, and the blonde watched as the source of the light slowly drifted down to hover above the floor in the middle of the room. She slowly approached the light source, cautiously holstering one of her guns but keeping a firm grip on the other one, just in case she was walking towards a trap. She thought back as she took the last steps needed to bring her within arms-reach of the glowing thing, and something about what was going on prodded at her memory.

Maybe it was because something similar had happened in the stories that Dante had told her? That would make sense, but nothing specific came to mind, so she shrugged off the feeling and decided to just improvise.

Patty tentatively reached out, and her hand closed around the source of the glow. The moment that happened, she was forced to shield her eyes with her free arm as the light brightened, and she had an entire galaxy's worth of stars behind her eyelids by the time the light began to die down enough for her to open her eyes. The heir to the Lowell legacy blinked repeatedly to try and clear her vision, because the last thing she wanted was for a demon to take advantage of her temporary impairment to put a scythe in her back. She didn't know how long it was before the spots in front of her eyes cleared enough for her to see the inside of the arm she had used to shield her face.

The blonde lowered her arm and looked at her outstretched hand, eyes widening in surprise when she had no trouble seeing what she was holding.

It was a lantern, an old fashioned one with four sides made of orange-gold colored glass that glowed with a warm light. The metal parts were dark gray – probably iron though she couldn't be sure – and in the center of the top part there was large ring that she was using to hold up the lantern. The thing would have looked right at home in a colonial museum but for one fact: it was forged in the shape of a demon's head.

Seriously, the top part where the ring was connected was in the shape of the top part of a demon's face, if a bit flattened, complete with light shining in the eye sockets and metal fangs. The bottom part was easily recognizable as the metal demon's lower jaw, and as a whole it looked like someone had put the orange-gold glass into a demon's mouth and somehow kept it from closing its' jaws. There were some symbols around the edges of the glass panels – small enough that they were hard to make out, even backlit as they were from whatever was serving as the candle in the lantern – and on the edges of the back panel of the lantern, but she couldn't even begin to decipher them without some books and serious help from Dante.

The lantern cast a pleasant, reaching glow through the entire room, highlighting the piles of dust on the floor, and she decided that demonic or not, she was keeping the thing.

Patty held the lantern up and away from her body, turning around and walking back to the corner where she had left the kid and the backpack full of explosives, because break-time was over. She had to finish clearing the demons out of the basement, do one final cursory sweep of the house itself, and then set off the explosives she was going to plant. She slung the backpack over her shoulders, sliding her arms through the straps easily as she tried to figure out how she was going to carry her guns, the lantern, and the kid comfortably. It wasn't like she could leave any of them behind, she thought seriously, and finally came up with a halfway decent solution.

She holstered her gun for a moment, managed to hook the lantern to her ammo-belt through some clever maneuvering, and then picked up the baby. She idly rocked the kid while she thought, and she abruptly realized that the kid hadn't cried once while she was fighting the horde of demons…A frown graced her features, because she was pretty sure that that wasn't normal, but there wasn't anything she could do about it now.

Biting her lower lip in thought, the teenage demon hunter twisted about as she tucked the kid in between her back and the backpack. It wasn't a child carrier by any means, but it would have to do until she came up with something better, she just hoped that it would work until she finished clearing out the last of the demons. Especially since the extra weight wasn't doing her back any favors and would certainly slow her down…

The seventeen year-old took a moment to take stock of her body, noting that the muscle twinges in her back and shoulders that meant that if she survived this she would be very, _very _sore in the morning. All of the walking she had been doing had also taken its' toll, and her legs and feet were beginning to ache, the kind of faint ache that you just barely felt until three hours later. Thankfully all of the training she had been doing with Lady had paid off and the various pains weren't as bad as they could have been.

Still, she knew that she had better wrap up the mission quickly, because her already-low store of ammo was getting lower by the minute, or so it seemed. The scratch on her arm throbbed almost on cue, as if to remind her about how easily the scythe could have cut off her arm instead of just scratching it.

Patty grimaced as she drew both of her guns, checked to make sure they were fully loaded, and then set off down the newly-accessible passageway that would hopefully lead to the last place she had to clear out before she could blow the place sky-high. Not to mention she also had to do a last sweep of the mansion before she set off the explosives, and that would take enough time on its' own.

Without breaking her stride, she calmly swung one gun around behind her and shot the demon that had silently appeared out of the piles of dust behind her in the face, sending it back from whence it came.

**Author's Note: Because I thought you had all waited long enough! My apologies if my description of the demonic lantern leaves something to be desired; I know it didn't translate as well as it could have. :P I want to thank all of you for being so patient, so this chapter is dedicated to all of you! Please review and tell me what you think! As always, constructive criticism is welcome!**


	10. Step Into My Parlour

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: the Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

**Long Live the Queen**

When Patty started seeing spider-webs appearing along the edges of the hallway she knew that something was up, because unlike the cobwebs in the mansion and basement rooms, these webs looked recent. And that definitely set off alarm bells in the back of her mind, for no other reason than the fact that regular spiders definitely shouldn't have been able to survive down there for as long as the sub-basement had been sealed…Yeah, those webs weren't a good sign.

It wasn't like she could just turn around and go back though, so she took a deep breath, steeled her nerves, and continued walking, grateful for the illuminating glow of the lantern hanging from her belt. The light from the strange-looking thing meant that she didn't have to squint to try and see through shadows around her, which meant that she was able to react faster when a demon appeared out of the dust on the floor. The ones that did were quickly sent back from whence they came courtesy of a bullet to the head.

One of the things that really worried her though was the fact that the kid (she really needed to think up a name for him at some point) hadn't made a peep the entire time she had been carrying him around, and though she was no expert on kids she _knew_ that that wasn't normal. Silently fretting about whether she had somehow missed something wrong with the kid, she was more determined than ever to finish up this job quickly and go find someone who would be able to tell her what the heck was up with the baby she was carrying around. Swiftly raising a gun and absently killing a Hell Pride who materialized at her side, her train of thought continued on, as firing her gun brought up another question: weren't babies supposed to cry or something at sudden noises?

The shots from her guns weren't exactly quiet, but the kid still hadn't made a single sound, and that really raised some red flags.

Still, there wasn't anything she could do about it, she told herself yet again, so concentrate on the job at hand and worry about everything else after she killed the remaining demons and blew the place up. She checked her guns, reloaded them, and looked back towards where she was going just as she felt the toe of her right boot hit something and heard a clattering noise. Stopping and looking down, she wished she hadn't as she saw the white bone a foot away from her feet, obviously where it had stopped after she had accidentally kicked it.

Glancing around, she saw that the hallway around her was practically decked in glistening webs, the stone the passageway was made of barely visible beneath the thick strands. And looking down at the floor again, she saw that the bone she had kicked wasn't the only one there, and she had the sinking feeling that she had found what had happened to the rest of the missing people…

Swallowing back the bile that threatened to rise into her throat, she narrowed her eyes as she carefully looked around at the walls and even up at the ceiling, making sure that there were no demons clinging to any of them. There weren't, but she wasn't about to let her guard down this late into the mission, especially not now that she had a newborn baby to look out for. She had a bad feeling that something bad was waiting at the end of the corridor she was walking down, but that was about par for the course on this job, she mentally noted. She was also more certain than ever that there was a stronger demon controlling the foot soldiers she had fought so far, and she hoped that she was getting closer to the big boss so that she could wrap up this twisted job as quick as possible.

The blonde was also itching to use the explosives she had been lugging around, but that would come later after she'd killed the remaining demons, she told herself firmly. Eyeing the web-covered walls apprehensively, she was pretty sure she knew what kind of demon she would be up against next. She remembered Dante's stories about the different kinds of demons he'd faced when he was younger, and she was pretty sure that the large webs belonged to one kind in particular…

With the lantern on her belt providing amble light to see by and her firmly ignoring the various bones she just _knew_ were scattered beneath the threads, she noticed that the passageway ahead was beginning to get lighter with no help from the lantern she carried. Her muscles tensing in preparation for a fight, even more than they already were that is, she was suspicious of the fact that no more Hell Prides or Hell Lusts had attempted to ambush her. That was both a good and a bad thing: a good thing because it meant she could conserve what ammunition she had left, and a bad thing because it meant that something ahead of her had scared the weaker demons off.

Checking the clips in her guns one more time, reassured that they were indeed fully loaded, she passed through to the source of the light, blinking quickly to avoid being blinded by the sudden change in illumination. A quick scan of this newest chamber made her think that maybe she would have preferred being blinded.

If she had thought the passageway had been covered in spider-webs, it had nothing on the chamber she had stepped into. The first word that came to mind was '_large_' and she now knew why she had had to go down so many stairs to get to where she was now. She was standing at the entrance to a circular chamber, with a high ceiling, the top of which disappeared into shadows before she could see it, and around the chamber were pillars carved into the walls themselves. The carvings, however, were almost completely concealed beneath layers of thick white webbing, though she could see a skeletal hand or leg sticking out between gaps in the threads. The chamber looked like a giant spider's paradise, she thought as she eyed the webbing holding the bones off the floor and disappearing towards the darkened ceiling.

The bones in this chamber, she concluded, were a lot older than the few weeks that people had been disappearing from the house – and there were a lot more of them than the drifters and teenagers that had vanished would account for. The source of the light she had seen came from the carvings of demonic faces on the various pillars, the mouths of which gaped open to form an alcove and emitted a glowing light. She didn't take the time to count how many of the light sources there were, since all that mattered was that they illuminated the chamber and let her see what was around her clearly. Turning slightly to look at either side, she saw that the demon-faced carving on the pillar to her right, right next to the entrance to the chamber, wasn't glowing. The alcove was a foot and a half tall and almost a foot deep, she estimated, an idea niggling at the back of her mind as she looked around carefully for any demons.

Patty really, _really_ hoped that the unlit demon carving wasn't booby-trapped or anything like that as, acting quickly as she shrugged off her backpack of explosives and drew the baby into the crook of one arm. Setting the backpack down below the empty carving, she gently set the kid inside the demon-carvings unlit mouth, waiting tensely for several minutes after letting go of him to see if anything would happen. Nothing did, and she sighed in relief as she leaned back to look at the baby's rather unnerving violet eyes – the kid actually seemed pretty comfortable and didn't seem inclined to make a fuss now that she'd set him down.

Her guns in her hands, the heir to the Lowell legacy was just straightening up and preparing to turn around when a mocking, grating voice spoke up behind her, coming from the opposite side of the room.

"Well now, since you've got your little kiddy settled, how about we get down to the _real_ fun?"

A shrieking laugh sounded – in triplicate – and the seventeen year-old demon hunter slowly turned to face the open chamber.

_Author's Note: And there you go, chapter 10. Sorry it took me so long, got besieged by plot bunnies for two separate series and got distracted by some pretty good ideas. This chapter goes out to LittleBounce, my chat-buddy and fantastic writer in her own right; I highly recommend you read her stories over in the Grimm fandom over in the TV Show section._


	11. Said the Spiders To the Fly

_Disclaimer: I don't own Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, sure wish I did though…_

**Long Live the Queen**

The three demons in the center of the room were the size of SUVs and looked like a bizarre mix of woman and spider, with white, spider-like bodies. The demons had the faces of human women, pale white to match their spider bodies, with four glowing crimson eyes and fanged-filled mouths. Their hair very much resembled the threads that made up the webs around the chamber, or so Patty thought, but then her attention was diverted to the blood red blades that took the place of what would have been the demons' forearms. Those _definitely_ looked like they could do some serious damage.

One giant spider-woman would have been bad enough, she mentally growled, but no, she had to deal with three of the things! The spider-woman on the left actually _simpered_ as it asked the other two, "Ooooo, her hair is like golden thread! Can I have her head when we eat her?"

Like hell she was going to get killed by three Arachne, as she remembered Dante calling the spider-women in his stories, and her blue eyes narrowed in a sharp glare as her muscles tensed minutely. "So, I take it I have you ladies to thank for the mess upstairs?"

The giggles that erupted from the Arachnes at her question sounded like nails on a chalkboard - in triplicate, and it was all she could do to grit her teeth and bear it until the demonesses ceased laughing. "So brazen! Oh, it has been centuries since we met food with such spirit, hasn't it sisters?" the Arachne on the right asked, gaining a chorus of agreement from the other two spider demons, and Patty had decided enough was enough. Slightly worn out or not, these demons were going _down_, if not for herself then for all the people who had died or been hurt, like poor Miranda, because of them, and they were going to go down _hard_.

What she had to do first, however, was draw the Arachnes' attention so they didn't decide to go after the silent baby behind her, and she knew exactly how to do that. Her guns were already in her hands and adrenaline was pumping through her veins, banishing the ache in her muscles and enabling her to put the slight pain in her bandaged left arm out of her mind, as she burst into motion. It took the spider-women by surprise, her sudden charge, and the demons hesitated for just a minute too long.

Patty squeezed the triggers and felt a wave of intense satisfaction watching the bullets slam into the spider-women's chests and heads, though it wasn't nearly as satisfying as listening to their shrieks of pain. She didn't stop to pat herself on the back though, she just kept moving, sprinting around the perimeter of the room, as close to the wall as she could get without getting caught in the webs covering them. As she ran, she continued to fire on the trio of demonesses, who had overcome their surprise and were now attempting to surround the seventeen year-old. Her shots weren't just towards the head and chest area - oh no, her bullets also took chunks out of the giant spiders' abdomens and legs, slowing them down and distracting them with pain.

Of course, she couldn't keep doing the run-and-shoot strategy forever, and the Arachne eventually managed to corner her, the three demons forming a triangle around the blonde demon hunter. She very much enjoyed the way the Arachnes' triumphant sneers transformed into expressions of pure shock when, after they had reared up and lunged towards her, she jumped straight upwards and allowed the demons to slam into one another. What followed was one of Patty's favorite moves - at the height of her jump, she did a back flip and as she pointed directly down towards the tangle of spiders, she pointed her guns at them, spun around quickly, and opened fire.

A hail of bullets rained down on the Arachnes, drawing out screeches of pain as hunks of demon flesh and blood flew through the air, splattering onto the webbed walls and adding a bit of color to the shimmering white threads.

She landed behind the tangle of demons, hitting the ground in a roll and coming to her feet in one smooth movement, her blonde ponytail whipping around her and the lantern clipped to her belt bouncing against her leg as she turned to face the spider-women. She took the opportunity to reload her empty guns as the bloody demons gathered their wits and untangled themselves, and she waited, poised and ready, as the Arachnes' faced her once more.

Patty was pleased to see that the Arachne on the left was wobbling and unsteady, obviously having a hard time staying on her feet with only two and a half legs left, and the Arachne on the right was missing a huge part of its' abdomen. The spider in the middle was in by far the best condition, but it was still missing two eyes, two legs, and one of its' scythe-like arms. Her eyes narrowed, and she felt a challenging smirk flash across her face as she channeled Dante as best she could, pointing her guns steadily at the three demons.

It was almost like a stand-off, and all that was missing was a tumbleweed and a coyote howling in the distance as hunter and demons faced off. Between one moment and the next, however, the four of them went from imitating statues to an explosion of movement, the Arachnes shrieking battle cries and Patty letting the bark of her guns do the talking for her. What followed was a mixture of flips, cartwheels, and jumps interspersed with bursts of gunfire as she evaded the spiders' attacks and retaliated in equal measure.

The Arachne missing the most legs went down first, letting out a death scream as it reared up, and then slowly collapsed, dissolving into green slime as it hit the stone floor. A tense moment passed, as both Patty and the remaining two spider-women stared at the gradually disappearing slime before the remaining Arachnes' let out horrible wails, screeches that sounded like someone dragging nails over glass as they turned on the one who killed their sister. This battle was even more vicious than the last attacked, and there were a couple of time when Patty thought that she was done for, but then the second Arachne, the one missing most of its' abdomen, died much the same as the first.

After its' other sister dissolved into a puddle of sickly green slime, the last spider seemed to go insane, screeching and shrieking and wailing something terrible as it charged Patty again and again. It didn't even try to use other tactics like it had at the beginning of the fight, such as spitting webs at her in an attempt to trap her, the Arachne just kept lunging at the demon hunter. The seventeen year-old actually thought she was just putting the demon out of its' misery as she unleashed a final barrage of bullets on the giant spider-like demon, bracing herself for the death scream that followed as the last Arachne vanished into slime that momentarily stained the floor.

The heir to the Lowell legacy knew that the slime itself would vanish soon enough, but she still avoided stepping into the puddles of the stuff as she walked back to where she had left the baby and her bag of explosives. She looked forward to blowing the place up, she thought warily as she once more ejected her empty clips and replaced them with full ones. She also noted, unhappily, that she was down to her last clips - aside from the ones she'd just replaced, she only had one extra clip left. That definitely spelled trouble if she was forced into another drawn-out battle...

Just as she reached the bag of explosives, more than ready to start planting them as she headed back up to the house above and hoping she had enough to bring down both the hidden rooms _and_ the mansion, a sharp shiver ran up her spine. She tensed up, standing back up before she finished crouching down, and she slowly turned around to face the middle of the room once again. Thankfully the adrenaline was still pumping, so none of her accumulated aches and pains bothered her, but still, she was shivering from the sudden malice that she felt.

A demon - perhaps even a devil - was nearby, and she was suddenly incredibly thankful that she was wearing her pendant. Her fingers were ready on the triggers of her guns as she looked around, tense and ready, and when she didn't see anything on the floor of the room, Patty frowned warily. Just because she didn't see anything didn't mean it wasn't there, after all...

And that was when eerily haunting laughter filled the room.

* * *

><p><em>Author's Note: Strangely enough, the thing I struggled with most in this chapter was whether to write 'Arachnes' for the plural or leave it as 'Arachne'. In the end I went with Arachnes, so eh, I'm sorry I took so long to finish this chapter. For a detailed picture of Arachnes, go to the Devil May Cry wiki. I apologize profusely if I messed up the fight scene - I tried to capture the disjointed feeling of a fight where sometimes you don't think, you just react. This is also the first fight scene I wrote in awhile, so please let me know what you thought of it! Please read and review, and as always constructive criticism is welcome!<em>


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